Friday, 14 May 2010

Planting out tender crops and then the frost

Firstly appolgies for not blogging for over a week I am still coming to terms with a tory goverment but I'll get over it in time!

I decided to plant out my courgettes and pumpkins as the weather has been so cold day and night they were started to struggle in tunnel also sweetcorn sweetie pie F1. I know that sounds daft planting out with temperatures being near to freezing at night and barely 12c during the day but there is a method in my madness.As you can see by looking at my pictures I planted out and then covered with my homemade cloches, my theory being it will be warmer under them than in the polytunnel so here is hoping.

The weather has been very cold for this time of the year over the last few days I have fleeced my spud beds and covered my runner beans what I planted out a couple of weeks back. Everything has survived so far so no complaints there, decided to sow direct today lots of different winter squashes along drainage ditch at side of my plot it is very prone to flooding(obviously as that is what it's there for) but thought I would give it a try. Good result yesterday as Dick one of the allotmenters from middle of site bought me a full trailer load of horse manure for the princely sum of £10 which I am chuffed to bits with! I used some of it to fill my celeriac bed with as you can see from pictures it has come on lovely and is ready for planting out when weather warms up this weekend. We bought a gas BBQ today from Argos which Anna put together on plot it has side gas ring for making a brew on site which got me excited, sad I know but you can not beat a hot tea or coffee on a cold wet day at plot. We will of course be using it for summer BBQ's weather permitting and crops permitting cooking fresh sweetcorn on the cob.

Also in my pictures you can see the spuds in sacks and toms within polytunnel are coming along great, the spuds now have flower buds on so not long before I will be tucking in to new potatoes smothered in butter lovely.

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Welcome to our blog

We are newish to allotment gardening and acquired our plot June 2009, we are at Stapleton allotments Bristol. Our allotment site has a country feel as we are surrounded by small holdings and are on the north east boundary of the city.
This blog is a way of keeping photographic and text information of the things we have done. We hope you find it interesting and welcome any comments and tips you may have.

As our knowledge of growing fruit, vegtables and flowers grows we also hope to become more informative and share our tips with you. Enjoy our blog and happy gardening to one and all.